Teaching children to understand it’s okay to be different is the main theme throughout the popular ABC series Operation Ouch!, with the message spreading all over the world.
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The BAFTA award-winning children’s series educates kids about the human body and health with the ickiest of fun experiments but in a “not too preachy” way. After eight years on the small screen the live stage version is making it’s way to Wollongong for the first time this Wednesday.
“The questions we get most commonly [from children] are why do I have a birthmark?’, ‘why are my eyes different colour?’, ‘why am I double jointed?’” co-host Dr Chris van Tulleken said.
“Kids want to know why they are different. We all remember from being children different is very hard – there’s a pressure to be the same, to be good at the same stuff, to look the same, to wear the same clothes, but we’re all born with different bodies.”
Dr van Tulleken said they try and celebrate the differences in biology and for children to respect their own bodies and those of others, while also reassuring youngsters hospitals aren’t a scary place.
Oxford educated Dr van Tulleken and his twin brother Dr Xand began their television careers creating documentaries on refugee medicine, alcohol, diet and other aspects of health though took up the challenge of dressing up and playing to funny sound effects.
“In our audition I put a needle into Xand’s arm and drained some blood out of him and he stuck a tube down my nose, into my stomach and pulled out some stomach acid … I don’t think anyone else bothered to do that,” Dr Chris van Tulleken said.
Each year they take time out from their regular jobs – such as humanitarian medicine and infectious diseases research – to film the show which sees them explain biology with stomach-churning experiments and visits to real emergency wards.
Dr van Tulleken said they don’t like to incorporate too much “eat your greens” as he doesn’t believe kids should be specifically told what is good or bad for them, but to be subtle like showing them what too much sugar can do to the body.
He said the best piece of medical advice he’d ever been given was from a professor of nutrition who believed if you could tell the world one thing it should be children should only ever drink milk or water.
“If you just got every child in Australia to do that you would fix a huge amount of adult and child health,” he said.
Operation Ouch! is at WIN Entertainment Centre on Wednesday January 10. For tickets and other dates visit: www.ticketmaster.com.au